Mother loses designer baby planned to save son

A mother desperate to have a designer baby to help cure her sick son has suffered a miscarriage, it emerged yesterday.

Shahana Hashmi, who won a legal battle to have a geneticallyselected child, is distraught after losing the baby, which could have saved four-year-old Zain.

He suffers from a rare blood disorder - beta thalassaemia - which could claim his life by the age of 30.

His best hope of a cure lies in a transplant of blood cells from a sibling who shares key immunity genes.

It is the second time Mrs Hashmi, 39, has miscarried a designer baby.

She and her husband, Raj, 40, have endured four cycles of IVF treatment and embryo screening to select a baby who will be a match for Zain.

Stem cells from the baby's umbilical cord are needed as donor tissue.

The couple now have just over a year to provide a brother or sister for the little boy, who turns five on Boxing Day. He needs a transplant before he is six. After that, he may be too big to benefit from the stems cells.

Zain's condition is so rare that doctors have ruled out finding a bone marrow donor through the national register. The couple, from Moortown, Leeds, were overjoyed to find Mrs Hashmi was pregnant last month but she miscarried a few weeks later.

She told Real Radio Yorkshire yesterday: 'We found a match for Zain, the embryo was transferred and I felt very, very pregnant. I felt this was it - we had done it for Zain.'

Shortly after falling pregnant, she had to appear in court as a witness.

'It was not very pleasant,' she said. 'A couple of days later, I miscarried. We are absolutely gutted but I am like a rubber ball and I just keep bouncing back up. I was very distressed and upset at the time but you have to pick yourself up and get on with it. I can't ever stop.'

The couple - who have two other children, Amaha, six, and Harris, three - plan to resume IVF treatment at the private Care at the Park Hospital in Nottingham in January. Mrs Hashmi said Zain's courage was an inspiration.

'His strength is something we all draw from,' she said. 'When we look at those big, brown eyes we think, "How can we not carry on?" When the pain gets terrible, he tells us he really needs us to have a baby soon to make him better. He keeps us going.'

The Hashmis went to the Court of Appeal for the right to pursue their treatment in Britain.

It was granted because Zain's disorder has a specific gene which can be screened for, meaning the embryo itself is being 'helped' by the technique.

Jayson and Michelle Whitaker were forced to go to the U.S. to conceive a designer baby to help their five-year-old son, Charlie, who has a rare form of anaemia.

Baby Jamie was born in June. Blood cells from his umbilical cord will be used to treat Charlie in the New Year.

The couple were refused permission to have embryo screening in the UK because there is no gene for Charlie's anaemia.